“Genius,” Rajon praised. Going over to the wall by the singing lock, he gave a little push along one side, and a waist-high secret door swung open, smooth as cream, revealing a stone staircase heading down into darkness. “Well, come along then,” Rajon said, “and let’s go see what your grandfather had hiding after all these years.”
Chapter Thirteen
After ducking through the low little child-sized door, the stone staircase leading downward seemed vast by comparison. While the passage was tall enough for Rajon to stand upright, the dim light from the lantern and the tangles of cobwebs caught in the corners made it feel to Davin as if he were sneaking into a long-sealed tomb.
After descending down up about forty shallow stairs, the passage leveled out into a wide flagstone corridor with an arched ceiling and cracked brick walls oozing beads and drips of moisture. As an oddity, lengths of wire sheathed in brittle candyglass were bolted to the ceiling overhead, with shiny bits of copper twinkling through the glass’s translucent sheen. While Davin had seen the quartz-like candyglass before, mostly used at Florin’s to insulate heating coils, in the lamplight the delicate crystals looked more like spun sugar candy.
At the end of the corridor, a single metal door stood wide open, jammed up against the uneven flagstones by its elbow-hinge. Moving under the door’s low archway, in the circular room beyond Davin could see that the main corridor ran off to the left for a significant distance, delving deep into the echoing darkness, while a trio of doors stood closed on the right side of the passage.
“This isn’t what I expected,” Rajon said quietly. “I thought these stairs would lead right to Mercuri’s laboratory. I don’t know where that passage goes.”
“These all might be his laboratories,” Davin whispered back, as he excitedly stepped forth and tried the closest handle. To his amazement, the door pushed open easily under his touch, without even a protest from the old metal hinges.
“Keep wary,” Rajon said. “Somebody has been oiling this door. Altius is still down here with us, somewhere.”
“I know,” Davin said, as stepped forward into a room of wonders.
Within the shadowy space, rows of benches and tables covered with objects and tools of every kind and nature caught his eye, from dolls to engine parts to dusty mesh screens to glass jars filled with metal cogs and bits and pieces of every size and nature imaginable. Overhead, the candyglass-wrapped cables made a full loop of the room, branching out along the ceiling into the dark corners of the cavernous space. On the walls, hanging from pegs were even more tongs and tools, some of a sinister and lethal appearance, along with goggles, masks, and elbow-length rubber gloves that had become the home to generations of wriggling fat white spiders. As Davin stepped into the room, his eyes alight with wonder, Rajon grabbed him gently by the arm and pulled him back.
“Touch nothing,” Rajon demanded. “There are many tales of scientific apprentices dying of toxin exposure, and it doesn’t take more than a nick for a deadly compound to get into your blood.”
“I know,” Davin said, barely hearing the gambler speak. Like a treasure trove or a long-lost library, the wonders and riches in this room were beyond anything he could have imagined when he had pursued his family name and his father’s inheritance. He’d assumed that every last vestige of his grandfather’s work had been sold off or devoured by time. But Davin could almost see the man, a man he’d never met, wandering the maze-like aisles of this secret laboratory, creating wonders whenever he could steal away for an hour or two.
A sharp cawing from behind Davin and Rajon nearly scared them right them off of their feet. Spinning around, Davin was shocked to see a raggedy mechanical crow bolted to the wall, with a metal beak and a haphazard halo of dusty black feathers sticking out in all directions. The demented toy had moving eyeballs, which seemed to be looking back and forth between the two men.
“What is it?” Davin asked.
“I don’t know,” Rajon replied. “But I most certainly hope it isn’t going to explode or light us on fire.”
“Nox nox?” the toy asked in a chirrupy raven’s voice.
“Who’s there?” Davin replied hesitantly, after a moment or two. But the little bird sat silent, little gears whirring in its breast while it waited for some other answer.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Rajon replied.
“Nox nox?” it asked again, sounding a little more concerned.
“I don’t get it,” Davin said.
“I think it’s a puzzle,” Rajon said. “Nox, meaning darkness. Or mathematically, the absence of terms.”
“So, what does ‘nox nox’ mean?”
“I’m not totally sure,” Rajon said, as he switched his sword-cane and the lamp to opposite hands. “But I’m guessing it’s a double negative, or maybe a play on words.”
“Nox nox?” it asked again, now sounding greatly concerned.
“Lumina?” Rajon asked, earning a series of excited croaks and calls from the mechanical thing.
“As you wish,” it said at the end of its little symphony, even as lightning flared across the ceiling of the room. The wires in the candyglass above them suddenly began to arc and glow, casting the room in a blue-edged flickering luminescence the likes that Davin had never seen. Now, Davin could see the room was far larger than he had imagined, with at least a hundred tables spread in a massive grid across the floor of the room, and the wonders contained on those tables were uncountable, including experiments that were just started, to half-finished primitive automatons, right down to a tiny, toy model of a coach-like object balanced precariously on a single looping rail.
By the time that Davin had walked up to the tiny track, one that reminded him a bit of the clockwork scene displayed at Clockers every winter season, the coach on the rail had just started to move, likely powered by the same strange energy source that sparked the lights overhead. At first rocking from side to side with a drunkard’s sensibility, soon the tiny inch-high coach picked up speed and began to circumnavigate the track, making a full loop of the staticky metal rail every fifteen seconds or so.
“This is really Mercuri’s lab,” Davin said, impossibly pleased.
“There are so many things here I haven’t seen before,” Rajon replied, equally awed. “Nor even imagined. Of all the things that your father sold, nothing he put up for auction was anything like this. I don’t know whether to believe that he knew this room existed, or if he was trying to save Mercuri’s legacy for the future. But I do know that I’m grateful that he left this room intact; it’s a wonder beyond any price.”
Moving away from the tiny whirring coach, Davin investigated another dozen tables, resisting the urge to pick up tiny jeweler’s screwdrivers, or to test the glistening consistency of a dusty shot-glass full of something that looked like liquid mercury. From tea-kettles to triple-lensed mechanical spyglasses to a miniature steam-engine just big enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand, the inventions and ideas never seemed to cease. As he stepped around stools, and moved from table to table, Davin found his mind trying desperately to put things together, to try and understand the roots of the technology he was seeing here, to understand his legacy and his place amongst such an assembly of wisdom and ingenuity.
But a workbench littered with mechanical cats and mice is what caught his eye the most. While Rajon was aisles away, looking down at a collection of spring-blades attached to something that looked more like a windmill than a garden fan, Davin bent closer over the table of dusty parts, trying to get a sense of what his grandfather might have been working on. While the mechanical mice were all very crude, and barely looked like mice at all, the cat-automatons had working joints, red jeweled eyes, sharp claws and needle metal teeth, and seemed to have been created by a different hand. Taking up one of the mice, and turning it over in his hand, he saw that the underside didn’t have feet, but a series of mechanical rubber tracks that probably allowed it speedy movement across any sea of open carpet.
That’s wh
en he saw the unfinished puppet, tucked up alongside a miniature representation of Mercuri’s house, but built down to dollhouse size and scale. No bigger than a baby doll, the little brass man had wires sticking out of its chest at all angles. While the facial features were still incomplete, with one eye and a nose still laying on the table ready to be inserted, the mechanical gearworks core beneath the thing’s chin still seemed to be intact, right down to the little oddly shaped slot resting right over its heart.
Davin felt in his pocket with his fingertips, where he could feel the cool weight of the metal heart he’d taken from the metal serpent just a few days earlier. Seeing that the doll had no arms and only half-finished legs, and no teeth with which to bite him, with shaking fingers Davin took out the cool metal lump, and held it up to see if it would fit in the waiting aperture.
To his first impression, it would be a perfect fit, which scared him far more than it thrilled him.
“Rajon?” Davin called out. “I think I found something.” Waiting for the other man to first come over, Davin fidgeted from foot to foot, anxious find out if his theory was right. When Rajon stepped up beside him, and noted the fire cage Davin held and the perfect sizing of the hole in the marionette’s heart, he gasped.
“Should I put the cage in?” Davin asked.
“Absolutely,” Rajon insisted, without hesitation.
Davin hesitated, not having expected such a direct answer. “Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Probably. So be careful. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Nodding, Davin inserted the metal heart into the doll, and was amazed to feel it click lightly and properly into place. Even more so, they were both amazed when the creature’s head lifted up and gazed at each of them in turn with its one good eye.
“Who’err you?” it said, with a squeaky little mechanical voice. “Where am I?”
“What’s your name?” Davin asked.
“Turk,” the doll said. “Now what the black hells is going on? Who are you people?”
“Who do you work for?” Rajon asked.
“Ahhhh…” the marionette said. “I gets it now. You’re them. I’m not saying another word.”
“Do you think you really have a choice?” Davin said, trying to be threatening, even as he maliciously poked the puppet in the chest with his forefinger. “You’re the snake, aren’t you?”
The puppet blinked its one eye, and tried to move its arms ineffectually. Looking down, Turk shook his head, seemingly irritated by the condition of its half-assembled toy body. “In a matter of speaking, yes.”
“What do you mean?” Davin asked.
“Nope, not another word out of me,” Turk said. “Bedding with the enemy, that. Capital stupidity.”
“We can make you talk,” Rajon said malevolently. “So, talk, before I make you.”
“Doubt it,” Turk replied. “No pain, no strain, no feeling. Just the metal and me, and you can bend and break the toy as much as you like. Doesn’t bother me, chaps. Bugger off.”
“We’ll tear you apart, then, limb from limb,” Davin said.
“Go right ahead.”
“We’ll crush the iron heart,” Davin said.
“It’s a quick death then, probably better than I deserve.”
“Then we’ll drop you down a sewer grate,” Rajon threatened, “and you’ll be stuck in that lifeless, lightless, soundless little box for all the rest of time.”
Silence met the last threat, and the clacking jaw worked itself, opening and closing with no sound coming out. To demonstrate his threat, Rajon lifted the puppet off the table, its half-formed little feet dangling in mid-air.
“Wait,” Turk said, his squeaky voice filled with panic. “Not that.”
“Ahh,” Rajon said, setting the doll carefully back down on the scarred wooden countertop again. “Now we have a common courtesy. Who do you work for?”
“Altius,” he said. “The Warden. Charette. All of ‘em.”
“Why were you sent to kill me?” Davin asked.
“Altius couldn’t let you get too close. He couldn’t get your da’s things from the Abbey vault because Guiseppe was too smart for him, but he couldn’t let your da’s things go wandering off with some young nipper, neither.”
“No, before that. At the factory. You’re the one that killed Yori, aren’t you?”
“Ah,” Turk said. “We didn’t know who you was, then, before you went snooping in the records. But after that, Charette figured out who you were, and she figured you and your mother was a threat to her larger plans.”
“Did you kill my mother?”
“Nah,” Turk stated. “That was one of Charette’s boys. He did her quick, from what Altius said. She didn’t suffer a note. Me, I did you, or what I thought was you, back at Florin’s. Guess I was wrong about that, too. Pity the lad.”
Angry at finally having the truth, Davin stepped away from the table, before the urge to tear the little doll apart overwhelmed him.
“How did you end up in the snake’s body in the first place?” Rajon asked.
Turk sat silently, saying nothing, before Rajon coaxed him to talk by making a little sideways glance towards the sewer grate.
“Charette,” he burst out. “She has one of Vermeni’s cog-grinders that does this soul-moving thing. It’s a big thing with the lightning and all these metal bits. Pretty scary, that.”
“Well,” Rajon said to Davin. “I may have to give my occult-minded daughter credit where it’s due…” He turned back to the puppet, now ready to mean business. “When you’re done with this job, can Charette put you back? Can she put you back in your own body?”
“That’s the deal,” Turk said without hesitation. “And full pardon from the Warden, besides, provided I ne’er set boots in the Empire again.”
“Well,” Rajon said. “Where can I find this hellish soul-swapping machine, so I can tear to pieces?”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Turk exclaimed.
“I’ll take you to that,” said a voice from behind them. Davin and Rajon both spun in place, only to see Altius standing back by the laboratory door, holding a giant mechanical device of some kind under his arm, aiming the nine gaping mouthed tubes mounted on the underside of the cannon-like object right towards them. Tiny jets of steam vented from a dozen different places around the housing, something that Davin thought comical.
“Altius!” the puppet shouted. “Get me out of here!”
“I heard everything you said, you little traitor,” Altius replied, even as he pulled back a hard lever built onto the side of the steam-powered device. With a whining roar, vapor began jetting out of the rear of the portable cannon, even as he targeted the puppet through an iron sight bolted to the top of the mechanical wonderment.
“But, Altius, you promised!” the little doll whined, even as Rajon and Davin started to edge back from the doomed little toy.
“There is no honor amongst thieves,” Altius said, and fired a noisy, blistering streak of shrieking sharp-tipped metal darts at the doll. Even as Rajon and Davin dove for cover, the puppet was blown into a hundred sharp-edged shards, with gears and wires bouncing and clattering across tables out all the way to the edge of the room.
“Dear Saints,” Davin swore, his ears still ringing from the screeching sound the cannon made as it had fired.
“Up with the two of you,” Altius demanded, even as he raised the barrel of the weapon up over his head, allowing streams of coolant liquid to gurgle inside the weapon from a central reservoir. “This steam-powered flechette gun says you are coming with me. Then you can have all the answers you’re looking for, once Charette is through with you.”
“You’ll never take us alive,” Davin said brashly.
“I don’t need you alive,” Altius responded, as he leveled the muzzle of the weapon back down in their direction once again. “Just mostly alive, or even barely alive. Charette can do the rest, whether you come on your own two feet, or I bring you down to her in a barrow.”
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“Fine,” Rajon said, as he got up and set his sword-cane down on the table next to him. “This meeting has been long overdue.” Davin, while terrified at the sight of the steaming, smoking barrels of the flechette gun aimed right straight towards him, also stood, following Rajon’s lead.
“Come on, then,” Altius demanded. “Into the long tunnel. And no tricks.”
“We’re going down to Vermeni’s house, I presume?” Rajon asked. Altius nodded, and gestured for them to come forward with his gun. “It’s just a way down from Mercuri’s house as the crow flies. I assume the tunnels would connect.”
“You are right about that,” Altius said. “Mercuri and Vermeni worked together on a number of experiments that would have shocked even the most progressive members of the old government. These tunnels allowed them to work together, to explore their genius in a way that the Stonehearts should rightfully be fearful of.”
Following the old man’s lead, the two men stepped out of the laboratory, and at his well-armed insistence, began to make their way down the tunnel. Above them on the tunnel roof, the candyglass-wrapped light-wires overhead now arced and flickered, providing ample light for all three men to see.
“So, what do you get out of this?” Rajon asked.
“Power,” Altius said. “Power, pure and simple. But after nearly seven years of serving that fool, Guiseppe, all while waiting for him to die, I’m glad to finally be out of the cloister.”
“Not much of a man of faith, are you?” Rajon asked.
“Bugger the Saints,” Altius said, and spat. “People should follow living men, not dead ones. Now move a bit faster, before I give you a few extra holes.”
For the next few minutes, none of the men said anything as they trudged along the doorless corridor. Only Altius’s labored breathing, as he exerted the effort required to carry and aim the heavy gun at their backs, echoed down the tunnel. More than once Davin looked over his shoulder, to see if the old man was close enough to charge and tackle before he could get off another lethal shot. But with Altius walking just a ways behind them, Davin knew that their options of taking him by surprise were few.
The Fire Cage Page 15